JPH07204253A - Tablet inspection system - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To provide a tablet inspection system capable of accurately detecting the number of tablets in a medicine bag. CONSTITUTION:A medicine bag 15 is illuminated from lower level with the first illumination tool 21, or from upper level with the second illumination tool 6 having a slit plate 7. In this state, the surface of the bag 15 is photographed with a CCD camera 2. An image processing device 5 binarizes an image obtainable from the camera 2 under illumination only with the tool 21 and reverses the binarized image, thereby producing a masking image. Also, an image obtainable from the camera 2 under illumination only with the tool 6 is subjected to a masking process, using the masking image and, then, the break points of a fringe pattern in the image are detected. Furthermore, a plurality of the break points are connected to form a continuous boundary line, and the binarized image is separated with the boundary line, thereby detecting the number of joint components in the image.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a tablet inspection system for detecting the number of tablets enclosed in a medicine bag.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Conventionally, a tablet packing apparatus (1) as shown in FIG. 8 has been developed in order to automate tablet packing operations in hospitals and pharmacies. The tablet packaging device (1) includes a tablet supply unit (11) in which a plurality of types of tablets are stored according to type,
Various tablets (9) discharged from the tablet supply unit (11)
Automatically into the transparent packing paper (14) via the belt conveyors (12) (13), and the packing mechanism (17) seals the packing paper (14) for each person. Is. In addition, a printing mechanism (not shown) for automatically printing the patient name, usage, etc. on the surface of the packaging paper (14) is provided in the transport path of the packaging paper (14). By separating the packaging paper (14) thus obtained at the sealing portion for each person, the medicine bag (15) for each patient shown in FIG. 2 is obtained. The medicine bag (15) has a printing section (16) for patient name, usage, etc., in which a necessary number of tablets (9) of a plurality of types to be taken by the patient are enclosed, Convenient and
There is no risk of mistakes in taking the drug.

However, in the conventional packaging work using the above-mentioned tablet packaging apparatus, the inspector visually confirms that a plurality of tablets to be packaged are accurately enclosed in one medicine bag, Due to this complicated inspection work, there is a problem that the efficiency of the whole packaging work is reduced.

[0004] Therefore, the applicant has proposed a tablet inspection system capable of automatically detecting the number of tablets enclosed in the medicine bag by image recognition for the image of the medicine bag (Japanese Patent Application No. Hei 5 (1999)). -334727).

In the tablet inspection system, as shown in FIG. 8, the packaging paper (14) discharged from the tablet packaging device (1) is further transported in the horizontal direction, and the medicine bag (15) is placed above the transportation path. A camera (2) for photographing the surface is arranged. Further, a planar illuminator (21) for illuminating the back surface of the medicine bag (15) is arranged at a position below the transport path. The camera (2) is a monochrome CCD camera having 410,000 pixels.

An image signal obtained from the CCD camera (2) is sent to an image recognition processing device (3) composed of a microcomputer or the like, converted into a binary image, and then an image based on the binary image. The recognition process is executed. As a result, the number of tablets (9) enclosed in the medicine bag (15) is detected.
Also, a monitor (4) is connected to the image recognition processing device (3), and the process of image processing is displayed.

[0007]

According to the above-described tablet inspection system, even when tablets are partially overlapped with each other, the number of tablets is recognized by separating the images of these tablets from each other. Can be done. However, as shown in FIG. 4 (a), a certain tablet may completely ride on another tablet, and in the binary image shown in FIG. 4 (b), the entire tablet may be embedded in the image of the other tablet. However, in this case, there is a possibility that the image of the loaded tablets cannot be identified and the number of tablets cannot be accurately detected. Therefore, an object of the present invention is to provide a tablet inspection system capable of accurately detecting the number of tablets regardless of the overlapping state of tablets in a medicine bag.

[0008]

A tablet inspection system according to the present invention comprises first illuminating means for illuminating the entire back surface of a medicine bag at an inspection position and second illuminating means for irradiating the front surface of the medicine bag with slit light. And image processing means for photographing the surface of the medicine bag, and image processing means for processing the image obtained from the imaging means to count the number of tablets in the medicine bag. The image processing means binarizes an image obtained from the image pickup means under illumination by only the first illumination means to obtain a binary image;
Means for inverting the binary image to generate a mask image, means for subjecting the image obtained from the image pickup means under illumination by the second illumination means to the mask image by the mask image, and an image after the mask processing. Means for detecting a discontinuous point of a striped pattern inside, means for connecting a plurality of detected discontinuous points in a direction intersecting the longitudinal direction of the stripe to obtain a continuous boundary line, and the binary image It comprises means for separating by the boundary line, and means for detecting the number of connected components included in the binary image obtained by this.

[0009]

First, the medicine bag at the inspection position is illuminated from the back side by the first illuminating means, the image of the medicine bag is taken in by the image pickup means, and this is binarized. In the binary image, for example, the image portion of the tablet in the medicine bag is "1" and the other image portions are "0" (see FIG. 4 (b)). Further, the binary image is inverted to obtain a mask image with black and white reversed. In the mask image, the image portion of the tablet is "0" and the other image portions are "1" (see FIG. 4 (c)).

Next, the medicine bag is illuminated from the surface by the second illuminating means, and the image of the medicine bag is captured by the imaging means.
In the image, a striped pattern due to the slit light is formed in the entire area, and the striped pattern is curved particularly on the surface portion of the tablet. Here, in the contour line portion of the tablet and the overlapping portion of the plurality of tablets, the striped pattern is discontinuous due to the upper and lower steps (see FIG. 4D).

Subsequently, the image having the striped pattern is subjected to a mask process by the mask image to extract only the image portion of the tablet. In this extracted image,
A striped pattern exists only in the image portion of the tablet (see FIG. 5 (a)). Then, a striped discontinuous point in the image subjected to the mask processing is detected. Here, the detection of the discontinuity can be easily performed by well-known image recognition (FIG. 5).
(See (b)). Since the discontinuity occurs in the overlapping portion of the tablets as described above, if these discontinuities are connected in the direction intersecting the longitudinal direction of the stripes, the contour of the tablet on which the discontinuity lies, that is, the tablet The contour lines of other tablets will be drawn (see FIG. 5 (c)).

Therefore, if the binary image is separated by the boundary line, the tablet image is divided into individual tablets.
(See FIG. 5 (d)). Therefore, the number of tablets can be known by detecting the number of connected components contained in the divided binary image.

[0013]

According to the tablet inspection system of the present invention, the number of tablets in the medicine bag can be accurately detected regardless of the overlapping state of a plurality of tablets.

[0014]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS An example in which the present invention is applied to the tablet inspection system of FIG. 8 will be described in detail below with reference to the drawings. As shown in FIG. 1, the CCD camera (2) is connected to an image processing device (5), and the image processing described later is executed by the device.

A second illuminator (6) which should irradiate the surface of the medicine bag at an angle of about 45 degrees diagonally above the medicine bag inspection position sandwiched between the CCD camera (2) and the illuminator (21). And a slit plate (7) is installed in front of the illuminator (6), and the slit light passing through the slit plate (7) is applied to the surface of the medicine bag.

FIG. 3 shows the procedure of image processing by the image processing device (5), and is shown in FIGS. 4 (a) to 4 (d) and 5 (a) to (d).
Represents the progress of image processing for a specific image. First, in step S11 of FIG. 3, an original image is obtained by capturing an image from a CCD camera under downward illumination by the first illuminator.

Next, in step S12, the original image is binarized at a predetermined threshold level to obtain a binary image as shown in FIG. 4 (b). In the binary image, for example, the image portion of the tablet in the medicine bag is “1” and the other image portions are “0”. At this time, noise removal processing consisting of contraction and expansion (see, for example, "Basic Techniques for Image Processing", published by Technical Review Co., Ltd., pages 53 to 56) is performed to eliminate noise in the image. Further, in step S13, the binary image is inverted to generate a black and white mask image in which the image portion of the tablet is represented by "0" and the other image portion is represented by "1" as shown in FIG. 4 (c). To do.

Next, in step S14, the image from the CCD camera is captured and binarized under the illumination of the slit light by the second illuminator. In the binary image, a striped pattern due to slit light is formed in the entire area of the screen as shown in FIG. 4D, and the striped pattern is curved particularly on the surface portion of the tablet according to the three-dimensional shape of the tablet. become. Here, in the outline portion of the tablet and the overlapping portion of the plurality of tablets, the striped pattern becomes discontinuous due to the step difference between the upper and lower sides as shown in FIG.

Subsequently, in step S15 of FIG. 3, the binary image of FIG. 4 (d) in which the striped pattern is generated is subjected to mask processing by the mask image of FIG. ), Only the image part of the tablet is extracted. In the binary image of FIG. 5A, the striped pattern exists only in the image portion of the tablet, and the other striped patterns are erased.

Then, in step S16, the striped discontinuous point A in the image as shown in FIG. 5B is detected for the image of FIG. These discontinuities can be detected by image-recognizing the discontinuity generated in the step portion as shown in FIG. 6, and for example, as shown in the figure, the angle α of the stripe in the discontinuity can be detected by one method. is there. Next, in step S17, a plurality of discontinuities A shown in FIG. 5 (b) are connected in a direction intersecting with the longitudinal direction of the stripes as shown in FIG. The boundary line B with the tablet is extracted.

Then, in step S18, the image of the boundary line in FIG. 5C is subtracted from the binary image shown in FIG.
As shown in FIG. 5D, the tablet image is divided into individual tablets.
In FIG. 5D, "1" is drawn as white and "0" is drawn as black. Finally, the number of connected components included in the binary image of FIG. 5D is counted to detect the number of tablets.

When counting the number of connected components, 2
After performing a labeling process on the value image (see, for example, “Basic Techniques of Image Processing” published by Technical Review Co., Ltd., pages 45 to 49), the number of labels is counted to recognize the number of tablets. Here, extract features such as tablet area and circularity,
It is also possible to determine the type of tablet. Then, it is judged whether or not the recognized quantity of tablets matches the expected quantity, and if they do not match, the fact is notified as a defect,
Alternatively, the medicine bag is automatically removed.

As described above, in the tablet inspection system according to the present invention, even when a plurality of tablets overlap each other, the overlapping portion of the tablets is detected by utilizing the illumination of the slit light, and the images of the tablets are individually divided. Therefore, the number of tablets in the medicine bag can be accurately detected.

Other Embodiments In the embodiment shown in FIG. 7, the first deflection plate (8) is arranged in front of (or behind) the slit plate (7) and below the CCD camera (2). A second deflecting plate (81) whose deflection direction is orthogonal to that of the first deflecting plate (8) is installed to prevent malfunction due to light reflected on the surface of the medicine bag. In the embodiment, since the light is specularly reflected on the surface of the medicine bag and the light is diffusely reflected on the surface of the tablet, the reflected light on the surface of the bag is cut by the second deflecting plate (81), and the image of the tablet is accurately CCD.
It is captured by the camera.

The above description of the embodiments is for explaining the present invention, and should not be construed as limiting the invention described in the claims or limiting the scope. The configuration of each part of the present invention is not limited to the above-mentioned embodiment, and it goes without saying that various modifications can be made within the technical scope described in the claims.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing the configuration of a tablet inspection system according to the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a perspective view of a medicine bag in which a plurality of tablets are enclosed.

FIG. 3 is a flowchart showing image processing by the image processing apparatus.

FIG. 4 is a process diagram showing the first half of image processing for a specific image.

FIG. 5 is a process drawing showing the latter half of the above.

FIG. 6 is a diagram showing a discontinuous portion of a striped pattern in a step portion.

FIG. 7 is a block diagram showing another embodiment.

FIG. 8 is a perspective view showing a configuration of a tablet inspection system according to the applicant's prior application.

[Explanation of symbols]

 (2) CCD camera (5) Image processing device (6) Lighting equipment (7) Slit plate (9) Tablet (15) Medicine bag

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. A tablet inspection system for detecting the number of a plurality of tablets enclosed in a light-transmitting medicine bag, the first illumination means illuminating the entire back surface of the medicine bag at an inspection position, and the front surface of the medicine bag. Second illuminating means for irradiating the slit light toward
The image pickup device includes an image pickup means for photographing the surface of the medicine bag, and an image processing means for processing the image obtained from the image pickup means to count the number of tablets in the medicine bag. The image processing means is illuminated only by the first illuminating means. The image obtained from the imaging means under
Means for binarizing to obtain a binary image, means for inverting the binary image to generate a mask image, and masking with the mask image for the image obtained from the image pickup means under illumination by the second illumination means A means for performing processing, a means for detecting striped discontinuity points in an image that has undergone mask processing, a means for connecting a plurality of detected discontinuity points, a continuous boundary line, and a tablet image Means for separating by the boundary line,
A tablet inspection system, comprising means for detecting the number of connected components contained in the binary image thus obtained.